No Frames Needed: 6 Ways To Hang Pictures In Your Dorm Room

One of the most exciting things about starting college is the chance to decorate your dorm room—after all, if you have to spend the year living in a 200 square foot box, it better at least be cute! However, university policies can sometimes make decorating difficult; you certainly don’t want to be facing maintenance charges for leaving thumbtack holes in your walls or pulling the paint off with your posters. Not to mention the fact that heavy picture frames and cinderblock walls aren’t exactly a dream combination! Don’t worry though—there are plenty of hassle-free and damage-free ways to hang up your photos in a way that fits your style:

DIY SOME FAUX FRAMES

Okay, okay—I know this headline says no frames needed, but hear me out! I promise, these aren’t your average boring wooden frames. If this is your first year living in a dorm, I’ll let you in on a little secret—washi tape is going to be your new best friend. Not only does it come on and off your walls easily and make decorating a snap, it’s super cute too! The tape comes in every imaginable pattern, so you can match it to your color scheme regardless of your decorating style. Use it to add a little style to plain posters and photographs and some graphic interest to your walls—you can create no-hassle frames in all different shapes that will come right off the wall whenever you’re ready to rearrange. Check out this tutorial for some tips on making your washi tape frames.

CLIP IT UP

There’s no denying that dorm room walls decked out in picture-covered clothesline are super popular—the inspo is all over Pinterest (and probably your friends’ Instagrams). If you love the look but want to branch out a little bit in your space, put a unique spin on this trend by clipping your photos to a cute wire grid instead! You can use colorful clothespins or cute binder clips to hang up your pictures and even add in other decorations like drawings or quotes. Command hooks will work perfectly to hang the grid on your wall, or you can just set it on your desk and let it lean for a hassle-free decoration.

GET IN TOUCH WITH YOUR CREATIVE SIDE

If you want to get a little artsy on your walls, this could be the perfect option for you—harness your creativity and use some pretty metallic string to create a luxe-looking geometric design that spotlights your pictures. This tutorial has some helpful hints for creating your own string art on your walls! To make it dorm-room friendly, you can tie your string to command hooks at the points of the design.

MIX AND MATCH

For all my indecisive ladies out there—if you can’t choose a reasonable amount of pictures to hang up, a gallery wall is for you! No need to worry about finding matching frames for the 1,000 pictures you want on your walls; just grab some double-sided mounting tape and arrange them however you’d like! You can use pictures of all different sizes and even add in canvases, posters, and art prints to add some visual interest to the wall.

GO VERTICAL

This design idea is perfect if you have a narrow wall in your room that doesn’t quite have space for a larger decorative element but is just begging to be covered. And it’s super quick and easy to put it together! It’s as simple as taping your pictures to the string of your choice and hanging the strings in rows on your wall. If you don’t want them to move around, you can add a command hook at the bottom and attach them on both ends. And if you want to get a little fancier, you can create a mobile-style design (like the one above) and attach all of the strings to a rod at the top.

MAP IT OUT

Finally, we have an awesome option for all the world travelers out there! Put your gorgeous travel snaps to good use and spice up the world map on your wall by including pictures of places you’ve visited where they belong on the map. Or, if you want to get a little nostalgic, you can add pictures of family and friends near the states or countries where they live—map out your high school squad’s different college cities or tape up pictures of cousins all over the world. Not only is it a cute and unique way to display your photos, but it’ll be a great reminder of the amazing places you’ve been—and might inspire you to start saving for your next trip.